Zeno's Library

Forty Thousand in Gehenna, C. J. Cherryh

2009-10-23T10:28:11-05:00

Well, this book made me really cranky for about the first three-fourths of its length. I couldn't quite decide if I was angrier with the authority figures in the book, for failing to be sufficiently open-minded about potential forms of alien intelligence, or with the author, for subjecting me to yet another book about how Humans Are Bastards. That meme is growing rather old for me, though I suppose it might have been less done-to-death at the time, as the thing was written 25 years ago.

I really have bad luck with Cherryh, which is unfortunate. She's an author I want very much to like, but can't quite seem to get the knack of. On the other hand, this was an improvement over my disastrous attempt to read the Chanur books, which I found appallingly boring, though not because of the excessive alienness of the characters, which I understand is the failure mode for most people), so I'll count that as progress? I'll make another try or two at other books of hers we have here, and perhaps I'll finally get the right angle of approach to enjoy her work, the quality of which I can already see quite clearly but cannot quite come 'round to enjoying.

Wolves of the Calla, Stephen King

2009-10-23T09:59:13-05:00

And with this book, I progressed into what I can't help but think of as the modern era of the Dark Tower saga - the books published since the time at which I first read The Gunslinger. I don't actually think it was quite as good in a technical sense as the ones leading up to it, but I only really noticed that after I finished the book. While actually in the middle of it, I was every bit as engaged with the plot and characters as I could wish.

I continue to be increasingly impressed by the underlying story of this with each additional book I read, and find I'm having more trouble each time waiting until the next one comes to the top of the pile. But there are thousands of books in our library, many hundreds of which I actively want to read at any time, so a bit of discipline in keeping the queue-jumping to a minimum is a thing I have had to acquire. And so it will be another week or two before I get to Song of Susannah, and I will be patient.

Mostly.

Grantville Gazette III

2009-10-16T09:24:45-05:00

OK, you know what? I'm going to stop hedging around with this now. These things are actually really bad, with only occasional glimmers of competence showing through the crap. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, as even officially-sanctioned fanfic is not overwhelmingly likely to be of professional quality, but egad. Surely they could at least sift out a better class of dreck. Perhaps not, though; Flint-as-editor is not what I would call a choice likely to lead to good writing. I mean, yes, he is the original creator of the world, and as such is the obvious candidate to serve as gatekeeper thereto, but while his stories are generally pretty good, his writing is workmanlike at best and cringeworthy at worst, and so upon reflection it is not beyond reason to presume that he might not have a great eye for good writing. And the ideas of these stories, to be fair, are generally pretty neat. It's the execution that is so often - and so sadly - lacking.

It's a little unfortunate that the Gazettes seem to suck so much. I said before that I recommended them only for completists, true, but the thing is, I am a completist. I'm going to be faced with the choice between continuing to read them and running the risk of stepping in a literary cow pat in order to get to encounter all the stories in this (really remarkably compelling) world, or forgoing the risk and reward alike. I'm honestly not sure which way I'll end up choosing.

Small Favor, Jim Butcher

2009-10-16T09:14:08-05:00

Yay Dresden! Though honestly, the "let Harry think he might possibly be catching a tiny break and then yank the rug out of him while the universe points and laughs" plot formula is perhaps growing just a tiny bit old. Still, now I've reached the end of what's available in paperback, so I'll be reading the books farther apart from now on, and the little things like this are likely to bother me less. So that's a bonus of sorts, I suppose.

Anyway, the book was no less compelling or enjoyable than the previous installments have been, which is to the good; it was also no less irritating in an almost subliminal way. I always finish one of these books feeling sort of like I just ate an entire bag of Fritos or something - I enjoyed it at the time but feel kind of guilty and maybe a little queasy afterward. And yet I don't stop doing it, so it can't bug me that much.

Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan

2009-10-05T15:35:30-05:00

I'm a little perplexed upon completing this, actually - I would have sworn I'd read the whole thing once before, but only the first half was familiar. It's certainly possible that the Perrin/Faile plotline and Elayne's infamous bath combined to make me unable to finish it, the first time through. Egad. Nonetheless, if read with the appropriate willingness to skim the cringe-inducing parts, the book is far, far better than my memories and the gestalt opinion of my corner of Jordan fandom had led me to believe.

...not that that brings it within shouting distance of good, I hasten to point out.

Anyway, only one more book - and that one I know full well I've not read - lies between me and the current end of the story, but the new book will be out in a few weeks, and I'm very much looking forward to it. I'm actually looking forward to Knife of Dreams, too, oddly enough.

Worldwar: In the Balance, Harry Turtledove

2009-10-05T15:18:25-05:00

Color me late to the party, I suppose; most people read this 15 years ago. I had a rough introduction to Turtledove, though, and it took me several years to get over it and decide maybe I should, before giving up on him entirely, try some of the stuff he was actually famous for rather than just the bits of his work that I stumbled across at random. And what do you know - this is actually really good alternate history. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by that. After all, while he certainly didn't invent the subgenre, he's written dozens of them, and is widely considered a master of the concept.

Plot-wise, the point of divergence in this universe involves the Earth of 1941 being invaded by the Race, a bunch of lizard-like conquerors with a remarkable inability to conceive of things different from themselves, which, along with humanity's unanticipated speed of innovation and adaptation, turns out to go quite some way toward offsetting their overwhelming technological advantages. The slowness of development of their own species as well as those previously conquered led them to anticipate no appreciable changes between their reconnaissance in the 13th century AD and their arrival 800 years later...

As I may have mentioned in the past, I love a good alternate history (though often avoid reading them because good ones are rare and bad ones are painful), and so I enjoyed the hell out of this one, despite it possessing no shortage of the awkward writing and poor character portrayal that has bugged me about Turtledove in the past. This time, the concept/setting/plot was good enough that I was able to overlook the writing, and indeed it didn't even register until I'd read about 90% of the book. I hope this trend continues, because if I continue to be able to overlook Turtledove's prose shortcomings in favor of his alternate-history strengths, I'll suddenly have rather a lot more alternate history available to read.

The Confusion, Neal Stephenson

2009-10-01T16:34:51-05:00

I tried to read this book once before, several years ago. At the time, I was in grad school, overworked and underslept and generally a mess in most of the ways in which it is possible to mess oneself up and not die, and so it is not surprising that I failed utterly to succeed in reading this exceptionally densely packed depiction of a series of interrelated and convoluted plots, rendered in gorgeous if somewhat, er, baroque language. Even in my bedraggled state I was fully aware that the book was phenomenal, and that my not finishing it was entirely my failure and not that of the book.

I was careful to pick a time when I was not tired-in-the-brain for this, my second attempt at reading the thing. It's a good thing I did, too, because this is not a book that allows one to be a passive consumer, to say the least. It's absolutely wonderful, though, and I enjoyed every second I spent reading it (except the time I dropped it on my head, because it ain't no lightweight book). The dawn of the Enlightenment is a fascinating time in history, and reading this treatment makes me feel like I've lived through a chunk of it myself. I can't wait for the final installment to get to the top of my reading list.

Recommended for appallingly overeducated people who like history, language, science, and reason, and have a goodly supply of patience, a decent tolerance for scatological and other coarse humor, and are willing to put some effort into the role of reader. Other people will find it impenetrable and probably not worth the effort.

Warbreaker, Brandon Sanderson

2009-10-01T15:30:08-05:00

A few weeks ago, I was attempting to explain to my mother how it is that the Wheel of Time series can still be in pending-completion mode instead of eternally-incomplete, now that its author has passed away. Upon my telling her that another author will be writing the remainder of the story in his stead, she asked "What does this other guy get out of the deal?" Well, entirely aside from the GIANT PILES OF CASH that are likely to result from sales of the books in question, what he gets is this: People who had never - and likely would never have - heard of Brandon Sanderson suddenly start seeking out his books out of curiosity, and he goes from a little-known fantasy author to one of the big names rather faster than is, shall we say, usual.

So that's what he gets out of it.

What we as readers - and by that I mean "me", because that's the part of we I can speak for - get out of it is exposure to this author that might otherwise have stayed under our radar forever, which would have been a bloomin' tragedy, I tell you. This man can write.

In Warbreaker, he creates another fascinatingly original world - all three of his worlds I've seen have been fascinating - in which the supernatural element is something known as BioChromatic Breath. Everyone is born with one Breath, but collecting large numbers of them - and they have to be given; they can't be stolen - bestows a selection of abilities upon people. Oh, and using the more active of said abilities leaches color out of things, which is a neat touch.

Oh, and the story doesn't suck, either, but the worldbuilding is so awesome it was hard to focus on much else, I confess. Perhaps upon re-read I'll have a more coherent review of the plotly portions of the book.

Recommended, in any case.

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, Galen Beckett

2009-09-23T10:43:56-05:00

This is another member of the set of books I would never have purchased had I not happened across it in a bookstore, and as with all books from authors of whom I have never heard (though it turns out this is a pen name for an author whose books we own but have not read), I approached the reading of it with some degree of trepidation. As it happens, I need not have feared. The book is absolutely charming. It's a fantasy of manners with a bit of a Gothic turn - and while it does borrow heavily in themes from assorted 18th century authors, I don't think that detracts from its enjoyability to any real degree. After all, while originality is a virtue, it is far from the only possible virtue in writing, and its presence or absence alone does not determine the quality of a work. Beckett takes a handful of familiar threads and weaves them into a thoroughly absorbing tale of life in a society which shares a fair number of characteristics with our own 18th century history, though the addition of magic and what must be a truly remarkably complicated solar system (the varying lengths of day and night are quite an original touch, I might add) are more than sufficient to keep the reader from losing track of the fantastic element.

Recommended for, mostly, fans of the fantasy-of-manners subgenre, though anyone who enjoys a slow unfolding of a large story told mostly through its effects on a handful of people will probably enjoy it.

Wizard and Glass, Stephen King

2009-09-22T16:08:14-05:00

I really must get better about booklogging more promptly after I finish reading a book, because when it comes right down to it, in the final accounting there's no visible difference between the books about which I had nothing whatsoever to say and the books about which I had many insightful and fascinating thoughts which were forgotten by the time I came to write them down. And while there is little I can do about the former case except feel vaguely guilty, the latter case is infuriating to me.

All that is by way of saying, as I am sure is obvious, that I can't remember what on earth I might have wanted to say about this, as its specifics have faded in my mind, leaving behind only a sense of something closely akin to awe - because it really is an incredibly good book. The interleaving of past and present is very skillfully done, I remember that much, and the story of Young Roland is almost painfully compelling.

...sorry. This is a lame review, and I have nothing to blame it on but my own procrastination. It is certainly not the fault of the work in question that I was unable to hold its state in my head for so long. Though in my defense, I feel I should point out that since then I've read a fantasy of manners, a Brandon Sanderson book, and approximately one-third of the Baroque Cycle, so my brain has had some competition for its time.

Winter's Heart, Robert Jordan

2009-09-15T14:45:34-05:00

Well, the "Perrin looks for Faile" plot is every bit as tedious as I remembered it being, and it's nowhere near over yet. Yay. Also, it is in this book that the "get naked and beat the crap out of each other" rituals reach the point of obliterating my suspension of disbelief. I mean, really, Jordan, what the hell, you couldn't conceal the authorial kink any better than that? Also, we have Elayne trying to be queen-y, the Sea Folk and Kin being annoying, the Seanchan likewise (though Tuon is cool), Mat being whiny, and Rand misinterpreting things and also being whiny. Did I miss anything? Oh, right, the cleansing of the taint and the GIANT BATTLE surrounding it, which was actually kind of cool and therefore felt like it completely didn't belong in this book.

Dear Brandon Sanderson: I still have faith in you, but redeeming the series after the crapfest it's become in the last ten years or so is a truly Herculean task. If you pull it off like I think you will, you deserve millions of dollars.

Inkdeath, Cornelia Funke

2009-09-11T20:30:25-05:00

I have often mused to myself about what it would be like to find myself in the world of some story or other. I've rarely carried the thought experiment out to its logical conclusions, however - daydreams are generally more satisfying if you don't have to sort out how you'd go about brewing lice repellent with medieval-era materials, or worry about any of those deliciously horrifying villains stumbling upon you when they're out villaining, and you without the protection of the Power of Plot.

Of course, as Inkdeath - and the two preceding volumes - are themselves stories, the protagonists do indeed have the Power of Plot on their side as they continue their journey through Fenoglio's world (initially depicted in Inkheart), but for quite a few of the dips and twists of the story contained herein, it is quite possible to forget that - not to mention, when one does remember it, one often does find oneself wondering if maybe it's actually that kind of story after all...

A gripping tale, all in all, and highly recommended to anyone who enjoys exploring the concept of story (including metafictional ideas), or indeed who enjoys good-quality storytelling for its own sake.

Y: The Last Man: Unmanned

2009-09-09T16:48:35-05:00

Yikes. Talk about harsh. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love a good apocalypse, but this one, despite being essentially instantaneous, was remarkably wrenching. 30 pages of buildup, four pages of apocalypse in which (almost) EVERY MAN ON EARTH DIES, then the rest of the book - indeed, the rest of the series - is all aftermath. It's beautifully done, from an impact point of view. A bit of time to get to know the setting and some people, become lulled into a sense of security despite knowing it's false, then WHAM, the world as we know it comes crashing to the ground, and then we have to stumble around trying to collect the bits, with all the king's men among the casualties.

It's hard to make much of a judgment of the thing as a whole from a single volume, but I think it's a post-apocalypse story with potential, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. I'll try to write something with more substance after reading more of them.

By Heresies Distressed, David Weber

2009-08-30T12:05:42-05:00

(See my reviews of the previous books in the Safehold series here and here.)

I don't generally do this when I'm reading a book, but in this case, I left the thing littered with bookmarks to help me remember things I wanted to write about. See, the thing is, Weber's writing is clunky, awkward, and in places actively bad, and yet I can't stop reading his books. I can't quite put my finger on why they're so compelling despite their flaws, but I did isolate a couple of specific instances of sloppy writing that jarred me straight out of the story when I got to them. (Yes, this implies I am better at complaining than at bestowing praise. I think I have to own that flaw.)

But before I get into details on the things that bug me about Weber, I shall attempt to talk a little about this book in specific, though unfortunately, due to the way the events in this book build on the prior ones, there are some spoiler issues to deal with, for which I have employed good old rot-13.

In a very real sense, nothing actually happens. There are no sweeping plot developments (nothing like Pnlyro'f zneevntr gb Funeyrlna naq gur cer-rzcgvir fheeraqre bs Rzrenyq in the previous book, or the grand setup-movements of the first one) - and that's not particularly surprising. We've moved into the mid-game now, and things have to inch along for some time before they get into place for whatever the next dramatic action might be (my money's on gur bssvpvny qrpynengvba bs Ubyl Jne ol gur Puhepu naq gur svefg onggyr jvgu gurz qverpgyl, though at this rate that'll happen in book eight or something).

Which is not to say the book was boring. There's plenty of battles (including a land battle at long last) for those who read Weber for the gore and/or the technological self-congratulation. There's rather a lot of politics, for those who read Weber for the maneuverings and petty backstabbing. There's a bit more world-building-y stuff, and a lot of character development. And the plot overall may not have advanced much in large terms, but it never felt stagnant.

Perfunctory review having now been constructed, I'm afraid I'm going to go off on rather a long rant about Weber's use of language.

At one point, there are two adjacent paragraphs that contain the parenthetical phrase "(from the [x]'s perspective, at least)". I suspect this may actually have been deliberate, but while repetition of this sort works in poetry, and indeed in some kinds of well-crafted prose, dropping a repeated phrase in to prose this unassuming and colloquial is awkward, and caused me to stop reading and do a double-take to make sure I hadn't jumped back up to the previous paragraph by mistake. It's doesn't work as "repetition for emphasis" (for one thing, that usually requires more than two instances); it just reinforces my thesis of "many famous authors are inadequately edited".

A portion of a sentence from another section of the book: "(...) which meant you tended to kill quite a few of your own men if you tried something like that, and the infantry, for some peculiar reason, didn't much care for that." (emphasis mine) Ha, ha, cute. I could forgive an occasional instance of this sort of attempted irony in the musing of a viewpoint character, if a) it actually were occasional, and b) if it were only one or two characters. The fact that this is apparently the way the vast majority of Weber characters formulates thoughts is odd, to say the very least.

One more: "Somehow, sir, I can't quite find it in my heart to regret that. Odd, isn't it?"

I'm not going to quote any more bits, but I think the tools of sarcasm and self-deprecating humor are vastly overused in Weber's writing, and that they are largely without desired effect when so frequently employed. At least, I'm assuming that the desired effect is to create the impression that these characters are real and well-rounded, with senses of humor all their own. What it achieves is to help make them seem like caricatures, and to, in some cases, deeply erode the suspension of disbelief.

That last effect is also achieved by the oh-so-casual dropping in of 20th and 21st century Earth pop culture references, or Earth military history references of earlier vintage. It really oughtn't to have quite so drastic an effect (it's less egregious than when it happens in fantasy, for sure), given that this is indeed our future, and one character, at least, knows this perfectly well. Nonetheless, it does, and while I could speculate on why that is, it would be a rather substantial digression, and not really particularly germane to the point that they just plain don't fit.

I'm not, by the way, what I would previously have called a particularly demanding person in what I expect from my prose. 95% of the time, what I want from an author's use of language is not to notice it. I want to words on the page to serve as a portal to the story, and carry the plot without interfering with it. (The other 5% includes things like The Phoenix Guards, wherein the gorgeous use of language is a significant part of the point of reading the book.) I think perhaps the reason the awkward use of language in these Weber books bothers me so much is that the story on the other side of the page is pretty damned awesome, and I am irritated by having to use such an imperfect lens to look at it. The writing is not, as a whole, transparent. It's full of "aren't I so clever" bits, which are very disrupting to the flow of the story, as I perceive it.

I note, in the interest of fairness, that my husband disagrees with me on pretty much every point here, and to him, the writing of these books indeed does disappear and serve as a perfectly serviceable vehicle for the story. So maybe I'm pickier than I thought I was? I don't really know.

As a further caveat, I do want to repeat that I am really loving this series - and for the most part have enjoyed the Honor Harrington series, too, despite it sharing pretty much the same list of flaws. I think the above-listed items would bother me less were it not so, if only because if I hated them, I wouldn't keep reading them anyway, and if I only kinda liked 'em, I'd be bothered less by the interference with my consumption of plot.

But as a closing note, one truly egregious item of authorial cutesiness: There is a character in here named Nahrmann Baytz. Given the way names in general are phonetically re-spelled, I leave it up to the reader to determine why that one is eye-rolly.

Lucifer: Crux

2009-08-30T11:11:33-05:00

And things gather nearer to the, er, crux, in this ninth volume of the Lucifer series, in which Lucifer himself is Sir Not Appearing (Very Much) In This Book, but at least we advance the plot line left hanging at the end of the seventh volume, and learn what Lilith's been up to for the last quite-some-time. It's also fun to watch what sanity the angels may have possessed at the beginning of it all unravel with increasing rapidity.

...I don't actually have much to say about this, I'm afraid, though I am enjoying the series immensely. Looking forward to the next two volumes, and to finishing the thing up.

The Waste Lands, Stephen King

2009-08-27T14:06:29-05:00

(See my reviews of the earlier Dark Tower books here and here.)

Unlike in The Drawing of the Three - and indeed The Gunslinger, too, though to a lesser extent - I cannot at this moment recall, in the course of reading this book, ever being jarred out of the flow of the story by a gratuitous-seeming "horror" element (which, except for the lobster-monsters, were all of the "gross" rather than the "scary" category). I hesitate to generalize from a single book in a series of this length (especially given the ridiculous length of time over which it was written), but it is possible that the fact that this series is not, in fact, horror has finally established itself in the mind of its author.

Which is not to say it's all sunshine and roses, because, well, I'm pretty sure Stephen King doesn't do happy-fun stories. But elements of a decidedly dark nature included, the tale is shaping itself to fit quite comfortably within the fairly large borders of "fantasy". Indeed, given the scale of the quest, and of the timeline hinted at for this world's past, it is a pretty good candidate for "epic fantasy", though I know most people call it "dark fantasy". It actually reminds me a surprising amount of the Song of Ice and Fire series, wherein the world is a nasty place, people die A LOT, and yet the sense of wonder and magic in the world remains intact.

Anyway. Enough meta-discussion. In this installment, Roland and Susannah and Eddie continue along the quest for the Dark Tower, along the way battling a giant cyborg Guardian, collecting a resurrected Jake, passing through a nastily post-apocalyptic city, and embarking on a trip on a sophont, insane train with an inordinate fondness for riddles. (Given that this thumbnail sketch takes us clear to the end of the book, I suppose it could count as spoilery, but I think it's a little too, um, sketchy to be much of a problem. Also the book is nearly 20 years old.) After The Drawing of the Three I'd started to wonder if the fondness with which I remembered this series (previously read through Wizard and Glass) was the result of being youthfully indiscriminate in book-taste combined with the years of memory-fading casting a nostalgic glow over things, but it turns out this book is actually quite remarkably excellent, even from a 30-something-cynic's perspective. So, that's a pleasant discovery.

Highly recommended.

Grantville Gazette II, ed. Eric Flint

2009-08-27T13:56:46-05:00

Much like the first of the Gazettes, this collection is fun but of spotty quality. I laughed out loud a few times, rolled my eyes a few times, but mostly it was fairly generic fare. "The Invisible War" is just about worth the price of admission all on its own, though, so I don't feel I wasted either money or time. Still, I do think the Gazettes are going to be pretty far down my ranking of this shared universe's offerings, overall.

Again, recommended only for completists.

Renegade's Magic, Robin Hobb

2009-08-27T13:26:29-05:00

(See my review of the second book in the Soldier Son series here.)

I have mixed feelings about the conclusion to this series, and by extension, about the series as a whole. There were quite a few long-awaited revelations contained in this installment, but the density of them, compared with the sparsity of similar information in earlier books, seemed more than a little rushed. The way all the loose ends got bundled together and knotted off in the last few dozen pages was also more than a little jarring. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I think, most likely, the series was either one book too long or about three books too short - the information should have been this dense all along, or else spread out over rather more story.

...not that I think there was that much more story to tell, and cramming the story there was into two-thirds the space would have been suboptimal, too, so, hell, I don't know. It's just not quite right as it is, anyway.

Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed it while reading it, and plan to re-read the entire series at some point without waiting a year or more between installments, and perhaps I'll think of it differently when I read the series as something more closely approaching a cohesive whole. (At the least, I'll be able to judge more accurately whether it is a cohesive whole, so that'll be good.) And while the ending, as I said above, feels rushed, I don't feel cheated by it - I think the story does right by its reader, if perhaps not in the most elegant fashion possible.

Queen of Candesce, Karl Schroeder

2009-08-27T09:18:51-05:00

(See my review of the first Virga book here.)

On the whole, I think this was a more well-rounded book than the first one. The basics of the world are already established, which makes the world-building aspects of this one less overpowering (though still fascinating, as we get a couple of glimpses into the past, and also the truly baroque societies which clutter Spyre, one of the oldest pieces of artificial land in Virga). Venera Fanning becomes a rather more sympathetic character in the course of this tale, too, which is also nice. As for plot, it's rather less sweeping in scope than the previous installment, but that's not a criticism. Personal stories can be just as captivating as epic ones, if not more so, and this one was very neatly done.

Still, even though the elements were more nearly in balance in this book, the ideas - the underlying concepts around which the world and its stories have coalesced - are still the real stars, and the thing is well worth reading just for the way they are explored. I think I am well on my way to becoming a Karl Schroeder fan, even if I was less than blown away by Lady of Mazes.

White Night, Jim Butcher

2009-08-24T12:40:16-05:00

At this point I'm honestly not sure what I can say about the Dresden books that I haven't said already. Go here, read all those entries. I still agree with all of them, and have come to the conclusion that these books are an awful lot like M&M's - not really very good, but you can't stop eating them anyway. And when you run out, you go and buy another bag.

At least this guilty pleasure doesn't make you fat.

The Whisper of Glocken, Carol Kendall

2009-08-24T12:18:18-05:00

(A sequel to The Gammage Cup, reviewed here.)

This book falls far short of the mark set by its Newbery-Honor-Book precursor, or so it seems to me. It is possible I'm not being as objective as I think I am, though, given that I first read the first one as a child, and the second as not until I had grown up into a fairly picky 31-year-old. First impressions are important, to be sure. Still, though, I was not unaware of the flaws in my re-read of Gammage Cup despite the lingering nostalgia from my original reading, so I am as confident as I can be in my comparison of the two.

In any case, the book is probably still quite good for what it is - a book for 5th graders - but I found it a bit overly simplistic for my jaded tastes these days.

Path of Daggers, Robert Jordan

2009-08-21T15:13:52-05:00

And herein, the latest in the Jordan re-read. I must say, it's not one of my favorites. Sea Folk? Irritating. Kin? Annoying. Seanchan? Boring AND irritating. Morgase-plot? Ugh. Egwene's schooling of the Hall of the Tower is pretty nifty, though, and the Ashaman-go-crazy-and-evil scene is nicely gripping. And when I first read it, the bit with Faile and the Shaido at the end was really awesome and gripping and cliff-hangy, but now that I know it's setting up the worst subplot in the history of all subplots ever, it just makes the book close on a really sour note.

So, in short, I'm glad the book is, well, short. But next is Winter's Heart, which is just boring, and Crossroads of Twilight, which is actively bad. At least neither of them is particularly long, either, and after that there's new (to me) territory in Knife of Dreams, so that'll be nice, at least. And in a few weeks, The Gathering Storm, to which I am looking forward rather intensely, somewhat to my surprise.

Worldwired, Elizabeth Bear

2009-08-21T14:59:12-05:00

(See my reviews of the first two of these books here and here.)

I'm not as dubious about the crapsack-world trope as my husband is, but it does knock a few points off a book's total score if it feels gratuitous. Or it would if I did anything so organized as keeping an actual score for books, but that would be way more anal than I have time or inclination to manage, so we'll just leave the points-thing as a figure of speech. Ahem. Sorry. In any case, the crapsackyness of this world doesn't feel gratuitous. The environmental disarray provides a goal and a motivation - something to overcome and/or fix; the political yuck provides a source of antagonism.

So, not gratuitous . . . just a trifle simplistic, I think. But that's OK, because until I settled down to analyze it in those terms, it didn't register as such, which means all the literary devices performed as they were supposed to in making me care about and become invested in the story. Which I was, in case y'all want it spelled out. Most of the things I particularly like about the second book, detailed in the entry linked above, are still true here. Not to mention, a few lingering reservations I had about a handful of plot or setting elements were resolved to my satisfaction, making me retroactively like the first two books more, too.

In short: A well-crafted series, and one I heartily recommend. It's a little difficult to believe this was Bear's first published work - the rough edges are few and unobtrusive.

Fortune's Fool, Lackey

2009-08-19T12:39:18-05:00

I think I'm starting to feel about new Lackey books the way Alistair felt about Eddings books until about a year ago: Predictable fluff; good to read when your brain is tired. (This is true of quite a few older Lackey books, too, but at least some of those have a core of actual story under the fluff.) I hope they don't continue deteriorating like the Eddings ones did, though, because while it's nice to have something on hand I can read without having to have more than about 1/3 of my brain on active duty, I don't think I could read something much less demanding than this without crying.

...and that's honestly about all I have to say about this, because if I try to describe it, it'll sound stupid (because it is), but it fit my requirements pretty well a few weeks ago when I'd had too many long days in a row and far, far too little sleep. ...even so, though, I thought it was kind of crap.

The Sharing Knife: Horizon, Lois McMaster Bujold

2009-08-19T12:13:54-05:00

Well, I was at least partly right when I said in my review of the third book in this series that Fawn likely had a significant role to play in the endgame, so that's nice. Also, all of the speculative elements advanced nicely. I am largely pleased with the way the elements all came together to bind the story off at the end, and I really need to go back and re-read the entire thing, I think. I hated the first book so very much when first I read it, and I want to know if reading it with the knowledge of what it's setting up will help me appreciate what it was actually doing, rather than hating it for failing to achieve what it wasn't trying to do in the first place.

Anyway. Yay nifty Lakewalker mojo-stuff. Moderate eye-roll at Dag being the most OMG INNOVATIVE Lakewalker maker in, um, ever, apparently (only moderate because it's really pretty common for protagonists to be the absolute best X that has ever been seen, or at least since $LEGEND, but it does get a little old). The characterization in general is pretty awesome, though, and I'm a little sad I don't get to spend any more time with them. Another reason to re-read, I guess.

By Schism Rent Asunder

2009-08-17T15:23:27-05:00

The last review I wrote was for a book with a ridiculously complicated title; this one is for a book with a ridiculously portentous, or possibly just pompous, title. So, that's fun. But that's just what the book is, though. Fun, that is, not pompous, although the PICA-protagonist can speechify with the best of them, to be fair. That's just a symptom of Weber-character syndrome, though, and as I keep buying and reading Weber books, I obviously don't mind that so very much. Even so, it does get a little eye-rolly at times.

I'm actually not sure what I have to say here that I didn't say in my review of the first installment of the series and that would not be unpleasantly spoilery. The pieces move, but no endgame is in sight - in fact, given how much progress this world needs to make in order to fulfill Merlin's goals, and how much progress was made in this book, I think this series will at least rival the Honorverse for word count by the time they get it all resolved. I really am looking forward to picking up the third one, though. And as long as the brain-eater doesn't come visiting, I'll probably continue to enjoy the heck out of these books, even with the speeches and the obsessively-depicted gorefests of the naval battles and the too-cute "I wanted to make sure none of my readers missed how clever I am" references to Things That Were. Great literature? Not a chance in the world. Great fun? Oh, yeah.

Angel: After the Fall: First Night, Brian Lynch, et al

2009-08-17T15:11:34-05:00

Dear lord, that's a complicated title. (Which characteristic, I might add, is mocked by Lynch in the afterword rather amusingly, too.) The title might well be the most interesting thing about the book, though - it retreats from the in media res nature of the first volume's beginning, and chooses to go back and fill in the gaps of pretty much all of the major characters and also some extras. I certainly understand the temptation to do so from a creative point of view, and I'm glad that they have stories to fill this transitional period for everyone, but presentation -wise it fell more than a little flat, with me. I can't help thinking the tales told in the issues collected herein would have been much better served by having been presented seperately, as flashbacks, when they would have been able to perform some narrative purpose. Getting them all in a glut like this was distinctly unsatisfying, and I was unable to care very much at all about any of the vignettes, despite them having what I can intellectually see as quite a bit of "punch potential", for lack of a better term.

Conclusion: Yawn. I'll give this series at least one more chance before I set it aside, but at the moment, I'm starting to think Joss should either take a more active role in this thing or else get his name off of this project before it damages his reputation, because, damn. I would never have thought sending LA to hell could be this boring.

The Drawing of the Three, Stephen King

2009-07-29T13:59:37-05:00

This is going to sound like an utterly ridiculous thing for someone reading a series a) called "The Dark Tower" and b) written by Stephen King, for gods' sake, to say, but I could really do with just a tiny smidge less dark in my dark fantasy, thanks.

Actually, that's not quite accurate. I'm perfectly OK with darker things than this - I think it's something about the delivery that makes the dark stuff extra-creepy. Which, well, kudos to Mr. King, because I know that's his specialty, but I'm not generally a horror reader, and perhaps don't have the necessary calluses to withstand the unexpected things-that-go-boo.

...all that was mostly by way of saying that the lobster-monsters are WAY CREEPY, Y'ALL. And I'd forgotten all about them in the decade or so since I first read this, and in fact of the entire book had pretty much only remembered the drugstore holdup (because it's really funny (if improbable, because I'm pretty sure marksmanship is as much in the muscle as in the mind, so the gunslinger possessing the other dude would probably not be able to make those shots)).

Anyway, yeah. Roland collects some henchpersons to take with him on his quest for the Tower, and wacky multiverse hijinks ensue. Good stuff. I highly recommend this series (y'know, so far, because my lack of memory of this one indicates I probably don't remember the third and fourth ones very well either, and have never read the fifth and following), despite the higher dose of heebie-jeebies than I would have strictly preferred.

It's a while yet before I get to the third one, which may be a good thing. Let's spread the creepiness out a bit, yeah?

(See my review of the first one here.)

Proven Guilty, Jim Butcher

2009-07-29T13:48:53-05:00

So, I said in my review of the last one of these that I was looking forward to the next one, and so I was, and my anticipation was fully rewarded: This book, like the others before it, was a ton of fun. I wish I knew what made these books so moreish (It's like eating Hershey Kisses - you know there's no real value in them, and you know there's much better chocolate out there, but, well, just one more?), but I can't put my finger on it. But they are, and, frankly, that's about all I have to say about it. If I try to analyze it I'll just end up damning with faint praise again, and I really don't like the net effect that leaves, because I really do thoroughly enjoy the books when I'm reading them. They make me laugh uproariously, and that ain't nothin'. So I'll just stop talking now, I think.

Books: More Than the Written Word

2009-07-27T15:20:58-05:00

It is a not-uncommonly-held position among those who care about such things that books in their current form factor are not long for this world. It is true that production costs for e-books will be substantially lower than for the print kind, though total cost of acquisition/editing/paginating the copy will be unchanged. I'm not an insider in the publication business, but I have to bet that the actual cost of buying the paper, running the presses, binding the books, and shipping them to wholesalers and retailers is really not the lion's share of the end cost of the book when compared to the cost of acquiring the intellectual property in the first place, editing it, and transforming it into an attractive and easily-read format. Given that, e-books will likely not be able to be sold for a price too very much lower than the current cost of paper books, at least not until they are old enough that they would, under the current system, be out of print. (Old books remaining available is probably what I would consider to be the biggest advantage of more widespread prevalence of e-books.) So people who are saying that one of the major advantages of e-books will be lower prices . . . well, they will probably be somewhat lower. But they won't be $1 new releases, that's for sure.

And that's before one takes into account the effect that book piracy will have on the cost of books, too. Though I'm not sure what percentage of potential book pirates in this hypothetical scenario are people who would have bought books under the current system at all, or perhaps are currently in the "used bookstores and libraries only" market segment. While library usage does have some effect on the market, used bookstore traffic is, so far as I know, entirely under the radar as far as market tracking is concerned, and certainly doesn't provide money upstream to the publisher and author. Buying a book that someone else is finished with is certainly not illegal, but it does have some characteristics in common with e-book piracy in that respect. Though obviously the ability to give a book away and yet also still have it is a definite factor in favor of the scale of e-book piracy...

If paper books become obsolete and e-books the norm, though, the used book market will certainly collapse, and if that happens without all the old out-of-print books being made available again in e-book format, it will cause me actual pain in my soul to think of all those books I never found that now are all gone, pulped and turned into copies of USA Today, if not post-consumer-recycled toilet paper. Rare-book stores will still exist, of course, and there will probably remain very occasional places that specialize in one form or another of old-style paper books, but it would definitely turn into a niche market at best.

All that being said, I hope the Glorious E-Book Only Future never comes to pass. Don't get me wrong, the idea of taking a Kindle on vacation with all the books I could possibly manage to read while away squirreled away in its little memory chip is very appealing. And as mentioned above, if publishers put their backlists into e-book format and release them, bibliophiles everywhere would squee in unison at the prospect of getting our grubby little hands on some of the things we've heard about but have never been able to find. But while I have no trouble seeing the appeal of the digital, the physical books have an importance to me entirely out of proportion with the importance of the information they contain. For me, the process of reading a book is a multi-sensory experience, and on-screen reading falls far short of the "real thing", as far as I'm concerned.

First, and most obviously, there's a book's appearance. They do say never to judge a book by its cover (and, OK, one appeal of a Kindle-like device would certainly be the ability not to be judged BY OTHER PEOPLE on the basis of the cover of the book one is reading), but we all do it, even those of us who read SF and know without doubt that cover art is almost uniformly godawful and rarely has any commonality at all with the contents of the book it presents. Still, it does tell us something - mostly, it tells us what the marketing department wants us to think about the book, which is a useful piece of information in itself, I think. Another visual impact of physical books, though I know this is likely to appeal only to a fairly miniscule fraction of all book customers, is the effect created by all the bookcases, packed full of books, that fill our house. It means absolutely anyone who comes to the door knows in a split second that we are book people.

Tactilely speaking, I almost never open a book for the first time without holding it in both hands for at least a few seconds, taking its measure in some subconscious fashion. There is the question of the quality of the book itself, even if it's a mass-market paperback. Does it feel light for its size, suggesting they used cheap paper? Does the ink come off on your fingers at the slightest touch? Those factors also give clues to what the publisher thinks of the book, and how much (or in those examples, how little) they cared about having it put its best foot forward. If it feels heavy for its size, and the paper looks and feels fine-grained, and the glue seems substantial and likely to last more than a handful of years before letting the pages go, and the ink is at least somewhat resistant to smudging, it's likely that they thought rather better of it than in the former case. Also, I have a personal preference for matte covers over glossy in paperbacks, and if the book I've just picked up has that particular sort of satiny feel, it's likely I will sit and savor it for a just a bit longer before opening it than I would a glossier cover. Also, while this is likely an imaginary effect, with an old book, you can almost feel the weight of the years it has seen seeping back out into the surroundings, creating an aura of antiquity around itself, and making the process of holding it into a very real bridge with another time.

And then there's the smell. I have to say, I'm with Giles on this point - books should be smelly. I love the smell of a brand-new release, of paper and ink and glue all bundled into something that my olfactory center recognizes as "new book" and which sparks a level of anticipation of which I am usually not even aware. Used books have a different but no less affecting smell - the smell of slightly oxidized pages, or the very slight mustiness that even the best-tended books pick up after a couple of decades - which years of prospecting in used bookstores have led me to associate with a sense of possibility, of potential. Some books acquired from used bookstores are less pleasant in their olfactory messages - the ones that smell like stale smoke are particularly icky - but for the most part, I love the way books smell.

One doesn't generally think of books as particularly noisy, but the little crackle a hardcover makes when it's opened for the very first time is certainly something of which I am aware, and the occasional rustle of turning pages when my husband and I are reading on the couch in the evening is a comfortable sound - it sounds like home.

I can't complete the set, I'm afraid. While I'm certain that, like every baby and toddler I have ever met, I have in fact eaten my share of books, I have never ingested one since my brain developed sufficiently to be able to lay down long-term memories and call them up again later, and so cannot comment on how books taste. My love of books may be multi-sensory, but I see no problem with leaving that one out.

So, while I can think of several circumstances in which e-books would be more convenient than the paper versions, I must say I hope the markets continue to co-exist. If they don't, we'll just have to invest in a print-on-demand machine, I guess, or else learn how to bind our own books.